Aug 9, 2014

REVIEW: The Hundred Foot Journey

'A snobby French restuarateur. An Indian chef who cooks with splices from his dead mother. A cute French waif who rides a bicycle through idyllic rural France. Young love! Old recipes! With cardamons on top! Sounds like a Lasse Hallström movie. This one comes to us from Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, who turned Richard C Morais’s book into bestseller. The title refers to the distance between two restaurants, but it turns out to mean so much more than that. It’s symbolic of the gulf that separated cultures, peoples, individual human hearts, and, in most probably, the contractually agreed distance that had to be maintained around the parking spaces of its superstar-producers during filming. Helen Mirren plays theforbiddingly proper Madame Mallory, owner of thehugely successfulLe Saule Pleureur restaurant, in the absurdly picaresque town of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, where she serves immaculate portions of classical French cooking, to a clientele that includes the President of France.Her noise hoists even higher in the air, when, into the abandoned restaurant on the opposite side of her quiet, rural road, movesa boisterous family of Indian emigrees, headed byPapa Kadam (Om Puri), to set up an Indian restaurant. How they can afford it, when they have just moved out from under the flight-path at Heathrow is something of a mystery, but up it goes, a big garish thing, with a cut-out of the Taj Mahal in front, and the name “Maison Mumbai” spelled out in huge fairy-lights, so we find it magical, but with the ‘U’ on the blink, to make sure we find it quirky.Poor India. The country was just inches from a clean getaway — Ghandi was a distant memory, Monsoon Wedding had just about blown over — and along comes Slumdog Millionaire and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to revive the whole sorry trope of the sitar-strumming, mystically inclined subcontinent. Naturally, Papa Kadam spends much time communing with his dead wife, whose spices are sprinkled into the dishes of his eldest son Hassan (Manish Dayal), a gifted chef and Papa’s secret weapon in the restaurant war to come. “Curry is curry is it not?” sniffs Mirren in one of several lines which cunningly alert us as to the correct direction of our sympathies. “Its called subtlety of taste,” says Mirren after Hassan sprinkles spices onto pigeon fermier rôti aux épices douces. Boo Hiss! Down with French gastro-snobs! “Its called meanness of spirit,” replies Papa Kadam. Yay for Indian spices and color and fairy-lights with a single letter on the fritz! All the food looks amazing — shot in swishy slo-mo by cinematographer Linus Sandgren, it is swept onto tables to full with orchestral accompaniment — but the movie so stacks the deck against snobs, vaguely and variously defined as “anyone wishing to use a cook-book”,“French people who insist on speaking French”, and “people who don't like loud music or curry”, that it’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for the poor, black-hearted creatures. Why shouldn’t madame Mallory object to the blasting of bombastic Indian house music, modeled on ‘Jai Ho’, day and night? And why should she be forced to watch Hassan sprinkle cardomons into bœuf bourguignon and applaud him for the heresy?'

"The book is a must for Woody Allen fans" - Joe Meyers, Connecticut Post

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R E V I E W S

"What makes the book worth taking home, however, is the excellent text... by Tom Shone, a film critic worth reading whatever aspect of the film industry he talks about. (His book Blockbuster is a must).... Most critics are at their best when speaking the language of derision but Shone has the precious gift of being carried away in a sensible manner, and of begin celebratory without setting your teeth on edge." — Clive James, Prospect "The real draw here is Shone’s text, which tells the stories behind the pictures with intelligence and grace. It’s that rarest of creatures: a coffee-table book that’s also a helluva good read." — Jason Bailey, Flavorwire

"There’s a danger of drifting into blandness with this picture packed, coffee-table format. Shone is too vigorous a critic not to put up a fight. He calls Gangs “heartbreaking in the way that only missed masterpieces can be: raging, wounded, incomplete, galvanised by sallies of wild invention”. There’s lots of jazzy, thumbnail writing of this kind... Shone on the “rich, strange and unfathomable” Taxi Driver (1976) cuts to the essence of what Scorsese is capable of." — Tim Robey, The Sunday Telegraph

"A beautiful book on the Taxi Driver director's career by former Sunday Times film critic Tom Shone who relishes Scorsese's "energetic winding riffs that mix cinema history and personal reminiscence".' — Kate Muir,The Times"No mere coffee table book. Shone expertly guides us through Scorsese’s long career.... Shone shows a fine appreciation of his subject, too. Describing Taxi Driver (1976) as having ‘the stillness of a cobra’ is both pithy and apposite.... Fascinating stuff." — Michael Doherty, RTE Guide"An admiring but clear-eyed view of the great American filmmaker’s career... Shone gives the book the heft of a smart critical biography... his arguments are always strong and his insights are fresh. The oversized book’s beauty is matched by its brains”— Connecticut Post

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“The film book of the year.... enthralling... groundbreaking.” — The Daily Telegraph

“Blockbuster is weirdly humane: it prizes entertainment over boredom, and audiences over critics, and yet it’s a work of great critical intelligence” – Nick Hornby, The Believer

“Beautifully written and very funny... I loved it and didn’t want it to end.” – Helen Fielding“[An] impressively learned narrative... approachable and enlightening... Shone evinces an intuitive knowledge of what makes audiences respond... One of those rare film books that walks the fine line between populist tub-thumping and sky-is-falling, Sontag-esque screed.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Exhilarating.... wit, style and a good deal of cheeky scorn for the opinions of bien-pensant liberal intellectuals.” – Phillip French, Times Literary Supplement

“Startlingly original... his ability to sum up an actor or director in one well-turned phrase is reminiscent of Pauline Kael’s... the first and last word on the subject. For anyone interested in film, this book is a must read.” – Toby Young, The Spectator

“A history of caring” – Louis Menand, The New Yorker“Smart, observant… nuanced and original, a conversation between the kid who saw Star Wars a couple dozen times and the adult who's starting to think that a handful might have sufficed.” – Chris Tamarri, The Village Voice

"A sweet and savvy page-turner of a valentine to New York, the strange world of fiction, the pleasures of a tall, full glass and just about everything else that matters" — Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan